Staten Island Advance/Irving SilversteinA sinkhole at the intersection of Richmond Road and Narrows Road North was caused in part by Sunday's downpour.

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- As torrential rains tapered off to a daylong drizzle yesterday, the damage from flood waters just kept coming -- with consequences ranging from underwater basements to a gaping sinkhole in the middle of a busy Concord intersection.

In the usual trouble spots -- low-lying blocks and basements in Oakwood Beach, Midland Beach and South Beach -- waters still had not receded entirely yesterday. In Concord, the combination of heavy rains seeping into a recently back-filled excavation and a broken sewer pipe underneath it ripped a hole in Richmond Road at Narrows Road North -- a busy spot alongside the Staten Island Expressway.

Narrows Road North was closed from Richmond Road to Targee Street yesterday as crews from National Grid and the Department of Environmental Protection, worked to fill the hole. National Grid had been moving a gas main in the area, as part of a large state Department of Transportation construction project, said utility spokeswoman Wendy Ladd.

SINKHOLE

National Grid crews had backfilled the area, which had previously been covered by metal plates, DEP spokeswoman Mercedes Padilla said. As heavy rains pounded the spot, an abandoned sewer line broke.

"Between a broken sewer line and the heavy rain, it undermined the location," Ms. Padilla said.

The sinkhole wasn't the only destruction evident on the Island yesterday. A slew of ceiling tiles were missing inside Jim Hanley's Universe, a comic book shop on New Dorp Lane -- after rain poured through the roof Sunday, flooding the store with several inches of water. Comic books not being the most water-resistant merchandise, the rain destroyed 80 percent of the store's stock, some of it one of a kind, general manager Nick Purpora said.

BUSINESSES CLOSED

In his 15 years working for the store, Purpora thought he'd seen it all. But he'd never seen it raining indoors. Still, he said the shop would bounce right back. "We'll be back in a week," Purpora said.

In fact, Purpora and a crew of employees and volunteers managed to get the store open yesterday afternoon -- and they will have the week's new comic books for sale tomorrow, the day they are released.

There are also wet comic books -- and magazines, and clothes, and all sorts of items -- in Midland Beach, where Iona Street resident Joe Bertacchi had piled his soaked belongings in front of his house after pulling them out of his basement.

This is the stuff that was floating around," he said.

BIG DAMAGE

There was still plenty of stuff, and plenty of water, still inside the basement. He estimated there was $20,000 in damage, not including his heating system. The water in the basement receded once yesterday, but with high tide, it returned, Bertacchi said. He blamed a nearby Blue Belt creek for the trouble. When the flood gates are open, water drains from the creek into the bay. The gates are closed at high tide and the creek is supposed to hold the water until they open again, he said, but it isn't deep enough.

"So the neighborhood actually becomes the holding pond," he said. The creek was slated to be dredged, he said, but as far as he can tell, it never was.

There was flooding in Oakwood Beach, too, and Christine Solby was sick of it. Her basement was destroyed for the second time in a few years -- and last time it cost $26,000. She thinks the neighborhood, which suffers from brush fires in dry weather and floods in wet, is neglected by city agencies for socioeconomic reasons.

"You have people living in these homes. Just because they're bungalows doesn't mean they're slum dogs," she said.

ROAD FLOODED

On nearby Fox Lane, Tommy O'Malley walked through a six-inch deep puddle that stretched across the narrow road, bordered by overgrown weeds. "The city doesn't pay one ounce of attention to us," he said.

Mrs. Solby had heard the DEP closed a valve in the neighborhood. But Ms. Padilla, the DEP spokeswoman, denied anything like that had occurred.

"Oakwood Beach is one of the wastewater treatment plants. We can never close the valve down there," Ms. Padilla said. "The system is running at its full capacity right now, and don't forget, this is a record-setting storm. Our system is handling 1.3 billion gallons a day of wastewater."

It is slated to rain again today, with Accuweather.com predicting a 40 percent chance of thunderstorms and up to a .23 inches of rain.